http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/35078 Wed, 22 May 2013 02:55:27 GMT 2013-05-22T02:55:27Z http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/43770 Title: Learning to live together : using distance education for community peacebuilding Editors: Baksh, Rawwida; Munro, Tanyss Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/43770 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42514 Title: A safer Sri Lanka? : technology, security and preparedness in post-tsunami Sri Lanka Authors: Choi, Vivian Abstract: This article focuses on the use of new technologies in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in concert with recent shifts in the rationale of disaster management practices. This shift views disasters, both natural and human-made, as inevitable risks of everyday life to be mitigated by preparedness practices. This preparedness rationale has increasingly shifted disaster management towards disaster risk management. Technologies figure in disaster risk management as mechanisms to know more about disaster risks and their impacts. The more knowledge gathered on risks, the better they can be managed, ideally generating a continual state of preparedness, and in the case of Sri Lanka, a sense of national security and a government that appears to care for the safety of its people. In this article, I discuss several technologies new to Sri Lanka’s disaster risk management practices. First, I explore Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which has gained global currency in disaster management efforts and the creation of an early warning system in Sri Lanka. I study technologies such as GIS as mechanisms that follow the unfolding complexities of the post-tsunami context in Sri Lanka, lending to ethnographic work attuned to the politics of disaster risk management and national security. Rather than dismiss technology as an objective and rational tool of management, I illustrate how the push to acquire more information and knowledge about disasters constitute new technological governmental and humanitarian practices. Then, by way of ethnographic example, I show how institutional and “rational” preparedness practices unfold in one of the most devastated areas of the eastern coast of Sri Lanka during a tsunami scare in September 2007. I conclude by raising questions regarding the relationship between security, the on-going conflict in Sri Lanka, and post-tsunami reconstruction. Description: Also published in “Tsunami in a time of war: aid, activism & reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh,” de Alwis, Malathi and Hedman, Eva-Lotta E., eds. (2009) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42514 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42513 Title: Finding Gampöng : space, place, and resilience in post-tsunami Aceh Authors: Mahdi, Saiful Abstract: The concept of gampöng, a spatial and cultural concept of community in Aceh is revisited in relation to resilience in post-conflict and post-tsunami Aceh. This paper shows how Acehnese use their social relation and network to cope with calamities. To examine this social and cultural capital, two communities in peri-urban Banda Aceh were observed during displacement and upon their return to their original villages. Social cohesiveness prior to disaster, leadership during emergency period and afterwards, as well as interaction with outside intervention over programs and projects were among the main factors shaping a new community on a “new” settlement. Whether these new communities and new spaces become places that can be called gampöng will depend on how these communities utilize the new physical outlook and infrastructure for their social interaction. Description: Also published in “Tsunami in a time of war: aid, activism & reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh,” de Alwis, Malathi and Hedman, Eva-Lotta E., eds. (2009) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42513 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42512 Title: From research to policy : the case of tsunami rehabilitation in Sri Lanka Authors: Bastian, Sunil Abstract: The objective of this paper is to identify the policy implications of the findings of the comparative project on tsunami rehabilitation carried out in Sri Lanka and Aceh. It begins with a critique of the notion of ‘emergency’ that dominates humanitarian organisations. It also shows how managerial tools like Guiding Principles are no answer to the complex issues faced by projects. The last section points to a number of issues raised by the research studies: the importance of constantly questioning the theoretical and methodological models used by humanitarian aid organizations; the need for a better understanding of the nature of the state and its possible role in rehabilitation; the tragic consequences which result when social organization and land tenure patterns are ignored by aid organizations; that the repetition of the mantra of community participation does not ensure equity. It concludes with the argument that for policies and projects to be successful, implementors have to make use of the existing knowledge base and must employ people who have the competence and experience to work in these societies; the institutional structures of the agencies must also be flexible to deal with all kinds of social and political complexities which are unique to each country. Description: Also published in “Tsunami in a time of war: aid, activism & reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh,” de Alwis, Malathi and Hedman, Eva-Lotta E., eds. (2009) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42512 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42511 Title: Geopolitics of pre-tsunami and post-tsunami aid to Sri Lanka Authors: Hyndman, Jennifer Abstract: The 2004 tsunami produced enormous loss and destruction, remarkable media attention, and an extraordinary outpouring of international aid. This paper seeks to argue that tsunami aid cannot be adequately understood if we do not contextualise it historically. It is at once distinct from long-term development aid and part and parcel of humanitarian assistance. Nonetheless, the conditions of its giving and the context in which it has been provided are constitutive of its meaning and impact in the case of Sri Lanka. In this regard, the relationship of the 2004 tsunami to aid disbursements and politics in Sri Lanka is of particular interest. Utilising data from interviews with international non-governmental organisations and aid agencies in Colombo, the salient responses of bilateral and international non-governmental agencies are analysed. A case study of one of these donors – the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) – is employed to provide a historicised and detailed analysis of its relationship with Sri Lanka over time. The various impacts of neoliberal aid policies within CIDA, active conflict in Sri Lanka, and the devastation of the tsunami witnessed worldwide are all probed in relation to CIDA’s assistance on the ground. The paper presents evidence from research conducted before and after the tsunami to argue that crisis creates exceptionalism. CIDA dramatically changed its neoliberal application of ‘aid effectiveness’ policy in Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami. While CIDA’s response was not exemplary of all bilateral foreign aid agencies to Sri Lanka, it illustrates the historicised and geopolitical antecedents that shape aid practices on the ground. Description: Also published in “Tsunami in a time of war: aid, activism & reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh,” de Alwis, Malathi and Hedman, Eva-Lotta E., eds. (2009) Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://idl-bnc.idrc.ca:80/dspace/handle/10625/42511 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z